Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!usenet!davis From: davis@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu (Palmer Davis) Subject: SysV/386 Message-ID: <1991Jun14.212405.17554@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> Summary: bad deal Keywords: green fuzzy bananas Sender: news@usenet.ins.cwru.edu Nntp-Posting-Host: usenet.ins.cwru.edu Reply-To: davis@po.CWRU.Edu Organization: Case Western Reserve Univ. Cleveland, Ohio, (USA) References: <1991Jun13.142906.28474@ni.umd.edu> <1991Jun14.194907.2960@kithrup.COM> Date: Fri, 14 Jun 91 21:24:05 GMT Lines: 36 In article <1991Jun14.194907.2960@kithrup.COM> sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) writes: > >Of course, you could have gotten a cheap '386 clone and run unix on that for >about half the money. > No, you couldn't have. I just got rid of my AT&T 6386, which originally cost ~$2800 a couple years ago through the university. (20 MHz, 13" monitor that wobbled badly when you tried to stick it into 800x600 mode.) Hardware prices and UNIX licenses are both considerably less expensive now, but not "years ago." And even today, once you add together the '386 CPU that's "half the money," a large enough hard drive to hold the enormous distributions most vendors are shipping (since we're talking about competing with the NeXT, you need TCP/IP, X, Motif, Looking Glass (if you're the "drool-proof" type -- I'm not), development tools, and room enough to build Emacs, gcc, and TeX), eight megs of memory, an ethernet card, super VGA card, monitor, and UNIX license, you come out with a system that costs almost as much as the $3250 NeXTstations our bookstore is shipping, with less than half the horsepower, a crippled I/O bus, and no multimedia capabilities. Throw in a Sigma LaserView, a Sound Blaster, and upgrade the CPU to a 486/25, and you have a more expensive system that still doesn't give you what the NeXT does -- you still have a losing OS, less horsepower, marginal multimedia hardware, and none of the software NeXT gives you. Go with the really neat 486/25 EISA stuff that's starting to come out, and you might as well have bought an HP 9000/720. Unless you're using a bottom-of-the-line 386SX with minimal facilities, System V/386 is a major lose. -- PTD -- -- Palmer Davis I'm probably wrong, so don't blame INS. CWRU Information Network Services Life is short. "Delaware has 1.1 million corporations -- I mean chickens." (sct)